The Boy With Black Eyes
by DeathoftheShadows
Summary: In the years after the Second Wizarding War, Melissa Sauvage is an aspiring potions student. All she wants to do is go into her chosen field after school. Only one thing stands between her and her dream: her teacher. However, a discovery after the door to his study gets locked behind her reveals a secret, and Melissa unearths a secret that has been buried for far too long.
1. Bleak Beginnings

*A/N* I always preferred Snape's death in the books. He pleaded a little more, made him seem more human... *A/N*

He heard voices coming from the room directly ahead of them, only slightly muffled by the fact that the opening at the end of the tunnel had been blocked up by what looked like an old crate. Hardly daring to breathe, Harry edged right up tot he opening and peered through a tiny gap left between crate and wall.

The room beyond was dimly lit, but he could see Nagini, swirling and coiling like a serpent underwater, safe in her enchanted, starry sphere, which floated unsupported in midair. He could see the edge of a table, and a long-fingered white hand toying with a wand.

Then Snape spoke, and Harry's heart lurched: Snape was inches away from where he crouched, hidden.

"...my Lord, their resistance is crumbling -"

"- and it is doing so without your help," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice. "Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I do not think you will make much difference now. We are almost there...almost."

"Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please."

Snape strode past the gap, and Harry drew back a little, keeping his eyes fixed upon Nagini, wondering whether there was any spell that might penetrate the protection surrounding her, but he could not think of anything. One failed attempt, and he would give away his position...

Voldemort stood up. Harry could see him now, see the red eyes, the flattened, serpentine face, the pallor of him gleaming slightly in the semidarkness.

"I have a problem, Severus," said Voldemort softly.

"My Lord?" said Snape.

Voldemort raised the Elder Wand, holding it as delicately and precisely as a conductor's baton.

"Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?"

In the silence Harry imagined he could hear the snake hissing slightly as it coiled and uncoiled - or was it Voldemort's sibilant sigh lingering on the air?

"My - my lord?" said Snape blankly. "I do not understand. You - you have performed extraordinary magic with that wand."

"No," said Voldemort. "I have performed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand...no. It has not revealed the wonders it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one I procured from Ollivander all those years ago."

Voldemort's tone was musing, calm, but Harry's scar had begun to throb and pulse: Pain was building in his forehead, and he could feel that controlled sense of fury building inside Voldemort.

"No difference," said Voldemort again.

Snape did not speak. Harry could not see his face. He wondered whether Snape sensed danger, was trying to find the right words to reassure his master.

Voldemort started to move around the room: Harry lost sight of him for seconds as he prowled, speaking in that same measured voice, while the pain and fury mounted in Harry.

"I have thought long and hard, Severus...do you know why I have called you back from battle?"

And for a moment Harry saw Snape's profile. His eyes were fixed upon the coiling snake in its enchanted cage.

"No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."

"You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do. He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I knew his weakness you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come."

"But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by someone other than yourself -"

"My instructions to the Death Eaters have been perfectly clear. Capture Potter. Kill his friends - the more, the better - but do not kill him."

"But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable."

"My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But - let me go and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can -"

"I have told you, no!" said Voldemort, and Harry caught the glint of red in his eyes as he turned again, and the swishing of his cloak was like the slithering of a snake, and he felt Voldemort's impatience in his burning scar. "My concern at the moment, Severus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy!"

"My Lord, there can be no question, surely -?"

"- but there is a question, Severus. There is."

Voldemort halted, and Harry could see him plainly again as he slid the Elder Wand through his white fingers, staring at Snape.

"Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry Potter?"

"I - I cannot answer that, my Lord."

"Can't you?"

The stab of rage felt like a spike driven through Harry's head: he forced his own fist into his mouth to stop himself from crying out in pain. He closed his eyes, and suddenly he was Voldemort, looking into Snape's pale face.

"My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another's wand. I did so, but Lucius's wand shattered upon meeting Potter's."

"I - I have no explanation, my Lord."

Snape was not looking at Voldemort now. His dark eyes were still fixed upon the coiling serpent in its protective sphere.

"I sought a third wand, Severus. the Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore."

And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape's face was like a death mask. it was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.

"My Lord - let me go to the boy -"

"All this long night when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here," said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner...and I think I have the answer."

Snape did not speak.

"Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen."

"My Lord-"

"The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot truly be mine."

"My Lord!" Snape protested, raising his wand.

"It cannot be any other way," said Voldemort. "I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last."

And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did nothing to Snape, who for a split second seemed to think he had been reprieved: but then Voldemort's intention became clear. The snake's cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders, and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue.

"Kill."

There was a terrible scream. Harry saw Snape'sface losing the little color it had left; it whitened as his black eyes widened, as the snake's fangs pierced his neck, as he failed to push the enchanted cage off himself, as his knees gave way and he fell to the floor.

"I regret it," said Voldemort coldly.

He turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. It was time to leave this shack and take charge, with a wand that would now do his full bidding. He pointed it at the starry cage holding the snake, which drifted upward, off Snape, who fell sideways onto the floor, blood gushing from the wounds in his neck. Voldemort swept from the room without a backward glance, and the great serpent floated after him in its huge protective sphere.

Back in the tunnel and his own mind, Harry opened his eyes; He had drawn blood biting down on his knuckles in an effort not to shout out. Now he was looking through the tiny crack between crate and wall, watching a foot in a black boot trembling on the floor.

"Harry!" breathed Hermione behind him, but he had already pointed his wand at the crate blocking his view. It lifted an inch into the air and drifted sideways silently. As quietly as he could, he pulled himself up into the room.

He did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching the dying man: he did not know what he felt as he saw Snape's white face, and the fingers trying to staunch the bloody wound at his neck. Harry took off the invisibility cloak and looked down upon the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry as he cried to speak. Harry bent over him, and Snape seized the front of his robes and pulled him close.

A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat.

"Take...it...Take...it..."

Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed form his mouth and his ears and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was, but did not know what to do - a flask, conjured from thin air, was thrust into his shaking hand by Hermione. Harry lifted the silvery substance into it with his wand. When the flask was full to the brim, and Snape looked as though there was no blood left in him, his grip on Harry's robes slackened.

"Look...at...me..." he whispered.

The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.

Harry remained kneeling at Snape's side, simply staring down at him, until quite suddenly a high, cold voice spoke so close to them that Harry jumped on his feet, the flask gripped tightly in his hands, thinking that Voldemort had reentered the room.

Voldemort's voice reverberated from the walls and floor, and Harry realized that he was talking to Hogwarts and to all the surrounding area, that the residents of Hogsmeade and all those still fighting in the castle would hear him as clearly as if he stood beside them, his breath on the back of their necks, a deathblow away.

"You have fought," said the high, cold voice, "valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery."

"Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste."

"Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately."

"You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."

"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."

Both Ron and Hermione shook their heads frantically, looking at Harry.

"Don't listen to him," said Ron.

"It'll be all right," said Hermione wildly. "Let's - let's get back to the castle, if he's gone to the forest we'll need to think of a new plan - "

She glanced at Snape's body, then hurried back to the tunnel entrance. Ron followed her. Harry gathered up the Invisibility Cloak, then looked down at Snape. He did not know what to feel, except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason for which it had been done...

***************** *A/N* Everything from this point on is what I have written. Any recognizable characters belong to J.K. Rowling. *****************

Something rose out of the floor, a swirling silver cloud that reminded Harry of a Patronus. But it seemed to be forming into something else, not a animal, but a woman.

She was beautiful, in a ghostly sort of way. She was young, very pale, except for her hair, her eyes, and the familiar dark tattoo on the inside of her left wrist.

Harry snarled and drew his - no - Draco's wand, lowering it at the specter.

She turned to face him, her eyes angry. "Don't you dare threaten me, Mister Potter. I am more than I seem."

"Who are you? You aren't a Hogwarts ghost..."

The ghost turned her head to look at the fallen Potions Master. "Be gone from this place."

Harry said angrily. "Answer my question first."

And then she was in his face, her black eyes alight with rage, flashing with loathing. Her hand was on his throat, as if prepared to strangle him, and Harry felt his blood run cold. Then there was pressure on his throat, squeezing, cutting off his breathing, making his body turn to ice. He started to struggle, choking on his own tongue. "I'm the Chosen One! I have to k-k-k..."

She snarled, her hand clenched. "I care not who you are. I care not what your task is." She released him, and Harry fell to the floor as if he had been pushed. "Be gone from this place." Her eyes were on Snape, and Snape alone.

Harry propped himself up. "B-b-but..."

She looked up at him and screamed. "Now Potter! Leave now!"

Harry fled, back down the tunnel from whence he came, Invisibility Cloak in hand, the shining silver specter watching him with her cold, dark eyes.

She turned back to Snape, and her eyes softened, glinting with a trace of long-forgotten pain. The ghost knelt next to him, taking one of his pale hands between her own, gently holding it to her cheek. He was not yet far gone, and his task was not yet complete. The Wizarding World still needed him. She started to gather what seemed to be pale, gold threads from his dark clothes, from his torso, weaving them together with the skill of a seamstress. The wounds on his neck closed, the poisoned blood oozing onto the dusty wooden floor of the Shrieking Shack. The Potions Master's tired, tattered soul and his shattered heart was sewn back together by the glittering strands of gold.

When she sat back on her heels, the job was done to the best of her ability, and all there was left to do was wait and see if she had started in time.

In the wee hours of the morning, in the time darkest before the dawn, when all hope has faded and the world waits in a heavy, pregnant silence, Severus Snape sat up with a jolt and a scream of terror. Justice had been served, the Death Eaters scattered, and the victorious slept soundly for the first time since the Dark Lord had returned to power. He was inches from death, weak and struggling - but alive. Miraculously alive...

The silver apparition appeared behind him, her back pressed to his. She whispered so softly he barely heard. "How are you feeling?"

"Sick." The professor coughed, for once sticking to simple, mono-syllabic words. "Weak. Tired..." He turned his head, looking down at the small weight that pressed against him. His black eyes turned remorseful. "Sad..."

She looked up at him, and sighed. "Sev..."

He whispered softly, his tone sad and pleading; oh, if the students could hear him now, his entire façade would fall to shambles. "Please?"

The ghostly girl sighed. "I'll stay until the sun rises. Then you have to head for safety."

Severus wrapped his arms around her, feeling the cold weight of her as he pulled the girl against his chest. He lay on the brink of death, and was determined to spend some time holding onto her, clutching her close. He was shaking. "Twenty long years, Nox... Twenty long, lonely years..."

She kissed his cheek. "They didn't have to be, Severus." She brushed a solitary tear off his cheek. "You deserve someone who lives and breathes. I no longer do that."

"I only want you. I only ever wanted you."

Her dark eyes looked up into his. She knew she was a tangible solid, and knew her weight was true weight, her hands able to touch, manipulate. She sighed and looked away as he touched her forehead to his.

"Please..." he pleaded, "Please, Nox. One last time..."

"It's always one last time. Then I manifest and you ask for more."

"You can always say no..."

"I can't Severus. It breaks my heart to see you so sad, so lonely..." She lay her head on his strong chest, listening as his heartbeat grew louder. "So cold..."

He tilted up her chin, and for a moment, he was a foolish teenager, drunk on new-found power and high on what had been a hesitant love. She was alive again, breathing, warm. She sighed and they exchanged a kiss. It spoke volumes, being tender and soft, whispering of a relationship lost to time, and one that would never exist again, no matter how solid Nox was.

The sun was rising.

Nox whispered. "I have to go."

"Must you?"

"Yes. If I hang around any longer - it's just going to hurt you."

"You've already hurt me. It is as if an arrow has pierced my heart."

She was suddenly angry, cold and unforgiving. The tattoo on her arm stood out vividly. "If you'd moved on when I told you - you wouldn't have that problem! I'm DEAD, Snape! People don't come back when they go through the Veil!" She was choking back tears.

He stood shakily and hobbled toward her. "Nox, I..."

She looked at him darkly. "The sun is rising."

"B-but Nox, you have to listen to me. Please stay..." He lunged for her hand, but just as he closed his fingers around hers, the first light of dawn pierced through the window and the silver girl vanished.

Snape stood in shock for several minutes, watching the sun rise, staining the purple clouds shades of pink and yellow before chasing them away entirely. The beauty escaped him.

He turned away from the window as the village of Hogsmeade began to wake under the warm caress of the sun. His face was set in a scowl, his eyes dark and cold as two cavern pools. He had gone from the teenager of twenty years past, to the cold, unfeeling Professor Snape. He was in danger, even though Voldemort was gone.

Azkaban was still a dark, desolate place.

He disapparated with a crack like a thunderclap.


	2. Before We REALLY Begin

Before we truly begin...

This is not a fan fiction. There we go - I've put it out there. This is not me manipulating the characters within J. K. Rowling's universe, or writing the same story from a different point of view.

This is what I know as AU or Alternate Universe. I have read many of the stories and alternate universes and I am tired of Severus Snape being portrayed as the dark, greasy haired git, the over-loving almost soppy single father, or the worst - *shudders* a sexual predator. The man has a heart. Or did, once upon a time.

In this universe, Severus Tobias Snape was saved from the death that awaited him by forces unknown to this world. After a miraculous recovery, he was put through several trials by the Wizengamot, and again was saved from a less than noble death in Azkaban by Albus Dumbledore, via the Pensieve, Harry Potter and Co., and also several of his comrades-in-arms, who did not have the same fortune as he. After several years spent on the "down-low" in Vancouver, Canada, the Potions Master returned to Hogwarts on the request of Minerva McGonagal, the headmistress. Hogwarts was ready to be re-opened, and Horace Slughorn had retired, this time permanently.

The first time the job was offered, Snape declined, knowing all too well what rumors awaited him in the dusty, winding corridors of the dungeons. But when the job was offered to him again in the following September, he took it on. His teaching methods did not change, and once again he became the bat in the dungeons, easily angered and the most brutal marker many of the students would ever see.

Over time, the Golden Trio fell apart. Harry and Ron got into a vicious brawl over Christmas dinner at the Burrow, and never spoke to each other again. It has not been determined what started the row, only that it did not end well. Unfortunately, neither did the marriage between Ron and Hermione. He was found to be "a possessive jackass" and she to be "a buck-toothed know-it-all." She left with her four year-old daughter Rose Jean that night, seeking shelter in the Leaky Cauldron.

The courtship and winning of Hermione's hand is shrouded in secrecy. It has been noted, that Rose has a very strong, positive relationship with her step-father, perhaps - it may interest the reader - even stronger with that of her blood father. Severus, being a clever man, perhaps courted Hermione through her daughter. Small gifts to the child when he took her mother out for coffee, just something to amuse herself with while they were gone. Rose has revealed, to several accomplished and well-known authors, a silver locket she keeps on her person at all times. It is not a gift from her father, but a gift from her dad.

The true story starts soon, I promise.

Severus was not quick to let go of some of his secrets. The time of his youth was rarely discussed, not even to Hermione would he speak of his late teens and early twenties. He was determined not to let the world know of promises long made, now broken, of lies that could kill, of truths that could have saved his life, of a fortune that lay in the deepest vault at Gringotts, a fortune beyond even the richest man's wildest dreams. There were certain things Rose couldn't play with. Certain toys in his office and study, certain books she wasn't allowed to read. Still a mysterious man, even lawfully wedded to a beautiful woman, and determined to keep it that way.

Melissa, on the other hand, was different story. She had been very nervous to come to Hogwarts, knowing the European attitude toward her people and people like her. Like the Métis.

The Metis people were began when an unfortunate French voyageur had to relieve himself with an Indian woman. The baby was a mixture of the two, explorer and native. Since they were created these people were shunned, cast aside, unwanted. But, over time, they built up a population of Metis people.

Melissa Sauvage was not one of the population. Her mother had been a Blackfoot Indian, of the prairies, and her father a Frenchman. She was an original Métis. Her mother threw herself from a hoodoo when the tribe cast her and the child out. The shaman of the village, incidentally, Melissa's grandfather, saved the child from being ravaged by the elements, guided by the spirit of the Golden Eagle, whom he claimed, marked the child as one of it's own. Melissa was special, and he saw that.

Melissa was eventually picked up by her father, in time to be saved from going to a residential school. They frequently visited her grandfather on the reserve, but most of the time, they lived in Europe, downtown London in a townhouse with iron rails.

She showed magical talent from the very beginning, blessed by the spirit of the eagle. Levitating plates, only to smash them, playing the piano from two floors away, once falling from the third-story window only to float down to the grass outside, grinning like a fool.

Sitting on the sorting stool, the dark-haired, tanned skin youth waiting for nearly twenty minutes before being sorted into Ravenclaw. Her eagle-yellow eyes flashed with relief as she took a seat, the blue and bronze seeming almost comforting. The Sorting Hat could not make an easy decision, for she was a hatstand. Divided almost equally between two houses, that of the Snake, and the other of the Raven.

Melissa had been a pariah since her birth. She wanted to fit in with the populace - and that is why the Sorting Hat had chosen Ravenclaw for her.

The Potions Master watched her with interested eyes, this being the time of his first year back at Hogwarts. A student. A clever student. She was one of the only students sorted into the house of the Raven that year. Many of the students went to Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. Three to Ravenclaw and four to Slytherin.

They were all thrown into one class for Potions. Seven students. Seven first years to terrorize in the first class. He gave the typical 'bewitching the mind and ensnaring the senses' speech, before pointing to the Ravenclaw with eagle eyes.

"Tell me, Miss, what ingredient, if used in it's natural form can sooth stomach aches and be a powerful laxative?"

She looked him straight in the eyes, filled not with arrogance like he expected, but confidence and curiosity. She took a deep breath and said softly, "Yellow flax."

The professor froze. He didn't even know such a plant existed. Flax was purple. He had been expecting an answer of ginger, perhaps spruce if the student had read the textbook. "Does such a plant even exist?"

She pulled some from her pocket and offered it to him. It was, indeed, a flax plant, dried, with unmistakably yellow flowers.

"May I keep this?"

She nodded nervously.

The professor returned to his lesson plan.

In her fourth year, the eagle-eyed girl was at the top of her class, and knew it. She was treated as well as one of the professor's precious Snakes. Her potions, flawless, her essays top notch, and she had already changed several of the recipes so they worked better, were more potent, stronger.

She was riding her intellect on a blaze of glory, until her cauldron melted, acid pouring over the dungeon floor. Her eyes widened, and began swiftly and softly cursing under her breath in the native tongue of her homeland.

The professor fixed her with a withering gaze as his Translation charms worked. "Is that truly nessecary, Miss Savage?" He was using the language she had been swearing in, and this clearly startled her.

Then her eyes narrowed. "What did you call me?!" They were speaking English again.

"Miss Savage. Your name."

"It's SAUVAGE! With a U!"

He was taken aback by her burst of anger, but did not let the emotion shown his mask of a face. "Forgive me, Miss Sauvage. A slip of the tongue..."

"Forked tongue you SNAKE! Do you even know what you've just called me?! A SAVAGE?!" She spat on the floor by his boots, then strode toward him to grind her heel into it. "I believe that is a similar "Englishman's" gesture."

It was his turn to narrow his eyes dangerously. "I believe I misunderstand - Miss Savage..." he did it on purpose that time, "Perhaps it would be best if you demonstrated my errant wording..."

She smiled and pulled out her wand. "With pleasure." And her robes became a doeskin dress with fringed sleeves and hem, worked delicately with glass beads. She wore a magnificent feathered headress over her free-flowing, straight black hair, and war paint shadowed her eyes and cheeks, giving her a frightening, gaunt look. She was barefoot at first, then gave the stone floor a withering gaze, and white mocassins edged with soft rabbit fur appeared on her feet.

She started to dance, chanting in her language, feathers flapping and flickering in the torchlight from the dungeons, stomping her feet and dancing around the simmering cauldrons, inhaling the fumes as her skin turned shiny with sweat. She stopped in front of one of her Ravenclaw students and held out one hand, then other arm crossed over her chest. She grunted. "How..."

The student returned the gesture and the grunt before she smiled and dipped her fingers into a pouch, painting his face with red stripes. She pulled him to his feet and together, they gave a war whoop so loud, the class cringed and the potions master took a step back.

He wanted to humiliate her, make her punish herself for her little outburst. But soon, she had the whole class backing her, painted with red, feathers in the girls hair. She danced right under the hooked nose of the professor, then stopped, yellow eyes filled with scorn.

She pointed to his potions stores. "Squaw go gettum potions ingredients." He knew from the look in her eyes she wasn't kidding. She snarled, and from her throat emerged the howl of a wolf so realistic he took several steps back in not fear, no never fear, but apprehension. Not since the Whomping Willow incident had he heard a call that close to him. She bared her teeth and stomped her feet,the rest of the class caught up in her game. "SQUAW WILL GO! SQUAW WILL GO!"

She stepped toward him, her army of six following her, pressing in from all sides. They chanted low, syllabic, guttural sounds, ones not even the translation charm could match to a word in English. He stepped back, retreating, down the corridor they had left in order to let him escape toward the potions stores, grunting like animals. When his back touched the cool wood of the door, Melissa smiled wickedly, revealing pointed teeth. She had a tomahawk in her left hand, blade glittering. "Chief Savage says to strange pale-face - GO GETTUM!"

The door slammed shut, and through it, he could hear laughter and whoops of satisfaction. The professor ground his teeth angrily. He was closing in on fifty and had been intimidated by a pack of fourteen year olds playing dress-up. He sat in his potions store until the period ended, then emerged with hesitation.

He gaped, seething with fury. His spare robes, kept in case of dunderheaded accidents, had been turned into a tipi - sticks of valuable ebony and myrrh used to hold it up. It had been painted with bright paints, effectively destroying both the wood and the cloth. A small fire burned inside, boomslang skin making the smoke reek. It too had been painted, with the image of a man with a hawk's beak for his nose and mouth. He growled angrily at that one.

He would make her pay... Somehow... Detention would suffice... For now...

Once the professor had salvaged what he could, scourgified the class room and made his way up to the Great Hall, dinner had already begun. The hall was unusually quiet as he took his place at the staff table, then conversation erupted again as he sat down. Half-way through his meal, for some explicable reason he looked up, and the girl at the head of Ravenclaw table looked back at him, her yellow eyes flashing with mischief, war paint still encircling her eyes and running down her cheeks. Now she was mocking him...

Melissa arrived at the door to the professor's office for a detention she had been notified of by paper crane. She still wore her war paint, yellow eyes flashing. What he had done was inexcusable - so she would continue to mock him and remind him of his cowardice every chance she got. She raised her hand to knock, but the silken voice she had gone from admiring to hating in the space of an afternoon called clearly. "Open the door Miss Sauvage. It's unlocked and unwarded."

She did as he said, then as she closed the door, cast her eagle eyes over him with anger and loathing. She said nothing.

The Potions Master didn't even raise his eyes from his papers, quill dipped in ink so red it looked like blood in his inkwell. He gestured to a stack of papers, essays by the look of them. Long ones too. "That is your stack. You stay until it is fully marked and graded."

Melissa stood tall and strong, not moving. She could have been a cigar-store Indian.

Snape looked up at her, black eyes cruel. "If you want any sleep tonight, I suggest you get started."

She still did not move, but her voice cut through the air like an obsidian knife through the hide of a buffalo. "I do not deserve this or any punishment you give me. I have done no wrong except fulfill the stereotype you brought down upon me."

The professor stood, towering over his student. "You humiliated me in front of my own Snakes. You threatened me." He strode toward her, forcing her back toward the chair he had placed behind the formidable stack of essays. She stumbled, but didn't give ground easily. Only when her knees banged into the table did he gain an advantage, wrapping his long fingers into her dark hair and pulling back, hard. He growled. "Sit. Down."

She whimpered and sat obiediantly. A little lesson in humility wasn't a bad start to her long evening. He went back to his papers and she began working on hers, using a poorly trimmed quill and runny ink.

For several hours, they sat in silence, until Melissa took one essay from her pile and added it to the professor's. He fixed her with a scowl. "And why can't you mark that one?"

Melissa looked at him. "It's mine. I can't mark my own paper. It's unethical, not to mention biased." The war paint was gone now, and her eyes didn't glint quite as harshly.

The Potions Master smirked on the inside, but on the outside, his façade remained flawless. "You were told to mark your pile of essays. Yet you see fit to attempt to give them away." He put what was left of his pile on top of hers. "Now you may mark all of them."

Her hands started shaking with fury, but she sat down and now, took the professor own quill and ink, angrily, viciously marking the papers.

He knew he may have to mark them again, but it was worth it to see the Comanche warrior unbend her pride to eat her slice of humble pie. The professor walked over to a worn leather chesterfield and sat, pulling a book off the side table beside him, opening it and relaxing.

Melissa growled under her breath. Vile, greasy old Death Eater. She kept marking though, her anger making the quill scratch viciously across the page, destroying essay after essay with red lines run through entire paragraphs, scathing comments in the margins, and always, always rounding down. She was merciless, but had the stack done before midnight.

She rubbed her eyes, and stacked the papers neatly on the Potion Master's desk, before turning to face the bat, waiting for him to dismiss her. She sighed and put her head down on the desk with a thunk. He was asleep. She stacked the essays again, putting hers on top, and hesitantly, quietly opened the door. It was still unwarded, thank the gods... She looked back at the sleeping professor and sighed. She floated his book out of his hands, and made an afghan settle in his lap. She smacked herself, damn her compassion. She closed the door and ran back to her common room, determined not to be caught.

Snape sat up when he heard the door click shut, startled. She was gone. He stood, and watched her disappear down the hall, the edge of her cloak vanishing around the corner. He snarled softly. She wasn't the first student to attempt to avoid a detention, and she wouldn't be the last. He returned to his study, closing the door and warding it firmly. The essay on the top of the pile caught his eye. It was hers, and the mark on it was low. Very low. The professor set it aside, wondering at her reasonings to give herself such a low mark. Then the second essay caught his eyes, the third, the fourth. He flipped through the pile absently, grunting in surprise. She had marked all of them, ruthlessly.

Snape retired for the night, but took Miss Sauvage's essay with him, merely curious as to her reasoning. He knew the rest of the essays he had given her had been terrible ones, and wasn't surprised by the marks there. But hers...

He read it falling asleep, in the light of an oil lamp. It was a strange thing. She took every suggestion she had made and run it into the dirt. All her explanations, all her research had flaws, according to her, and one thing he saw repeatedly, that annoyed him to no end, was "not in the textbook."

The reason she had such high marks was BECAUSE her information wasn't just copied out of a ratty old textbook. She had instinct. She knew what would work and what would not. She mentioned ingredients with unknown properties - known only to her. And she was RIGHT about them.

He had made a fair bit of profit in the promotion of North American herbs at Potions Conventions across Europe. And that little bit of extra money was appreciated.

He sat up, dipped a nearby quill into the green ink he used to keep his journal and scrawled terse instructions across the top of the roll of parchement. Then he put out the light and feel into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Melissa did as the instructions told her as soon as she read them. She had been told to wait ten minutes or until the class was silent, stand up on her chair, and make a scene. Upon which point, she would be escorted from the classroom to discuss the paper.

The class was silent, concentrating on parring the gizzards out of flobberworms, when she kicked over her cauldron with a horrendous crash. She screamed at the top of her lungs, "You obtuse, greasy bat!"

The professor looked up lazily. "Yes?"

Melissa choked, it was all she could do to keep from laughing at how dryly he had replied. She turned the sound into angry tears. "You're determined to bring my mark down! This is because of yesterday isn't it?! Snake! Deceiver!"

He stood up, and the Ravenclaw who had become her first solider stood as well, a challenge. He fixed the boy with a magnificent scowl. "Sit down, boy."

The boy sat, but Melissa remained standing. "This is FRAUD! I bet you give them-" she pointed to the Slytherins, "-really high marks because of the house they are in! I'm just a failure because of the house I'm in!"

The professor's lips twitched. She was really a good actress. He pointed to the door. "Out in the hall. Now, Miss Sav-" he caught himself. That wasn't necessary this time. "Miss Sauvage."

She stepped around the edge of her half-finished potion, until she crossed the path of the potions master and deliberately started to splash like a child in a muddy puddle. She looked up at him defiantly, then walked to the door and slammed it shut.

When the professor joined her in the hallway moments later, the first thing she blurted out was an apology. "Your instructions just said make a scene - I didn't know what you meant..."

He waved the apology away. "A beautiful performance, Miss Sauvage. But your grandfather dying or something along that line would have been perfectly acceptable."

She nodded and from the pocket of her robes, drew out the now, slightly crumpled roll of parchement. "Did I do it wrong?"

"May I ask you a question before we address this?" His pale fingers, took the essay from her. She nodded, looking nervous as the dark wizard towered over her. She knew the rumors. And knew what Mark lay beneath his left sleeve. He said softly, in a tone usually reserved for his Snakes. "Could you explain why the word 'savage' is so offensive?"

She drew in a deep breath. "Because there is a difference between Native Canadians and savages. The people's that butchered General Custer were savages. The Blackfoot of the plains are not. We are a peaceful people."

"You include yourself amoung that number?"

"I can, if I choose."

Ah. She was mixed. Melangée. Metis. "And you fulfilled the stereotype the way you did because...?"

"You've successfully insulted every member of the tribe I half-belong to with a single word."

He nodded. "My apologies."

"Apology noted, and may be accepted when the wound scabs over."

He frowned. "I remember the night you were sorted. You were the hatstand."

She nodded. "The other house was Slytherin, if that interests you at all. I don't want to be a pariah. Not anymore than I already am." She stumbled. "N-no offense..."

Again, the professor waved her comment away. "None taken. Now." He brought forward her essay. "This was compelling to read. It doesn't deserve this mark."

She hunched her shoulders. "It was terrible. I don't know why I handed it in. Garbage."

He scowled. "Stop that. Running yourself down."

Her eagle yellow eyes darkened.

He continued. "Melissa, you are a clever student. I don't want to nip this bud. I want to encourage it. Feed it. Let it bloom."

Her eyes were cast down, her chin tucked close to her chest. She was shaking with apprehension. "Desert roses only grow in the sand."

Snape was barely able to conceal a smile at her streak of vanity. Desert rose, indeed. "Then find your patch of sand. And let NO ONE transplant you. Whatever you choose to do - you will find success. I can guarantee it."

She nodded, still looking very small, very sad.

He lifted her chin. "Keep your chin up. It really annoys the people trying to break you down."

She smiled. "Thank you, sir."

She walked inside, through the door and the professor grabbed her arm. "I explained to you quite distinctly, Miss Sauvage - you are not welcome in this classroom until you improve your temperament. "

She snarled, catching on quickly. "Give me a reason to improve my temperament and perhaps I will!"

He seized her by the chin and raised his hand, the sound of flesh on flesh echoed around the now silent classroom, Melissa's head jerking violently to one side. "Perhaps - that will give you a head start on your epoch to discover this 'reason'."

The room was silent as Melissa ran out, tears streaming in her eyes, her hand holding the side of her face, as if hiding a red welt in the shape of her teacher's closed hand.

She was a good actress.

Snape had never touched her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~,~~~~~~~~~~

Snape was married to Hermione during the summer between Melissa's fifth and sixth year. It was a small, very private ceremony, but well executed and satisfactory.

They honeymooned in New York City, but made day trips all over Canada and the United States. Snape insisted on visiting several Indian reservations, merely curious as to what was there. Hermione was in hysterics when they visited Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, just because the name was so ridiculously long. They had lunch in a small café, just within the borders of the reservation.

Their waitress was a girl about sixteen, with eagle yellow eyes. She recognized her teacher, but said nothing. What was there to say? Only awkward questions from her overly-curious brain. How is your summer? Who is your lady friend? How are you doing?

She took their orders and brought back the coffee they had ordered. The woman had specified what she wanted in hers, but Snape had forgotten to do so. She put it in front of them and he remembered. "Did you put anything in it?"

She shook her head. "I know how you take your coffee, professor."

He blinked with confusion and she retreated to the kitchens, kicking herself. Now he would put it together - and what other Hogwarts student would be working on an Indian reserve?!

But then the food was ready and she had to take it out to them, and tried to leave quickly.

"Miss Sauvage?"

She froze. "Yes, professor?"

"Have your O.W.L.' s come in the mail yet?"

She nodded. "Yes, professor."

The woman scooted over in the booth and patted the plastic seat next to her. "Sit down and talk to him, dear. He doesn't bite." Melissa watched as the woman's amber eyes flashed to Snape, who had on the smallest traces of a smirk. The woman flushed and Melissa had to fight to keep from doing the same. There was something she really didn't need to know.

Melissa felt her eyes narrow, trying to keep her brave face. "I'm working. I'm not supposed to sit down with the customers. Restaurant policy."

She flashed the pair of them her work smile. "I should be going now."

"Melissa." The Potions Master's voice cut through the air like a silver knife through silk ribbon. "Sit down."

She pulled up a chair and sat, a respectful distance from the pair of them. She lifted her chin and her eyes flashed proudly. This was her land. Her turf.

"Were you satisfied with your OWL's?"

"They were what I expected them to be." She looked over her shoulder, checking to make sure her boss didn't emerge from his makeshift office.

"Which NEWT classes will you be taking?"

Melissa counted them off on her fingers. "Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Transfiguration, Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and History of Magic." She winced, knowing how full her schedule was. "I want to take up Alchemy and Healing as well..."

The woman blinked. "Good for you."

Melissa felt the heat rise to her cheeks at the praise. She heard footsteps and stood, kicking the chair back into place. "And how is everything here?"

The pair of them nodded happily and Melissa walked away to give them some privacy.

She returned with the bill about fifteen minutes later, and left again. When she came to clear off the table, under the woman's plate was a bright red, fifty dollar bill. Melissa blinked with surprise. Most people who came in rarely tipped at all. She tucked it into her pocket, then went about on her shift like nothing happened.

Her grandfather picked her up in his rickety old pickup truck that had been painted so many times, it didn't really have a single colour anymore. She smiled and kissed his wrinkled, tanned cheek, her mind switching gears to speak in the native tongue. "Thanks, Grandad."

He tweaked her nose in response. "Anything for you, my child." He grinned and started up the engine, then drove down the winding, gravel road that led back to the reservation.

Melissa sniffed, confused. The inside of the truck usually smelt like tobacco and hunting dog, but there was something different today. She rubber-necked around to look in the backseat. "Grandad - something smells funny..."

"Eyes forward." He had cuffed her in the side of the head, and his dark eyes were sharp with reprimand.

She hunched her shoulders and turned around. She sat in silence until her grandfather drove into the reserve and hung a right, heading for the hoodoos. "Grandad..."

"I know. I'm taking you for a picnic."

She swore sometimes he was loosing his mind. She whined, "We did that yesterday..."

"It's your birthday, darling. We are going for a picnic. Up on the hoodoos."

She sighed and shut up. Once the old shaman made up his mind, there was no stopping him. The strange smell still puzzled her, and she turned on the radio to distract herself.

Catch the blue train... Places never been before... You can find me somewhere down the crazy river...

She changed the station.

And for Saskatoon, the weather tonight will be...

She changed the station again, and again...

Her grandfather pulled of to the side of the road, next to an unofficial path that led up to the place where he had found her wailing with hunger, a Golden Eagle circling above her. Grandad went around to the backseat and drew out a cardboard box for Melissa, which he pushed into her hands.

"I know it's been a long time in the making, but Grandma finally got the feathers sewn into it."

Melissa's eyes widened. "You mean it's ready?"

Grandad nodded.

Melissa hopped back in the pickup and threw on the skydiving suit with thin membrane connecting the wrists and the ankles, like the skin of a flying squirrel. She knew the wind would support her - people had been jumping off the hoodoos for ages, using para sails or parachutes to support them. But Melissa would fly...

She walked out with her hair hanging in a braid down her back, the membrane connecting her wrists and ankles covered in soft, bronze feathers. She was the eagle, and her eyes shining happily. She hugged her grandfather carefully. "Thank you..."

He grinned and waved her up the hoodoo.

And then she was running, gone, up and up the path, knowing where the boulders were, the pits and places where she could twist her foot out of place. The wind picked up as she ran up the edge, keeping her arms, no - her wings, close to her body. Her breath settled into her running rhythm as she reached the top, calming her nerves and the whispers of doubt that echoed in the back of her mind. A couple sat at the top, heads close together, but she only realized this as an opportunity to show off. She stopped, collected her nerves, then sprinted for the edge.

The woman screamed, but the sound was lost to the rising wind as Melissa, carried forward by her own momentum, threw herself off the edge. Time slowed, the wind ceased to be the force that beat back the rock into fantastic cliffs and formations that would last a thousand years. There was only the fall, the rush of the ground rising toward her, the knowledge she would spatter like a bug on a windshield when she hit the ground, the beating of her blood in her ears.

Then her wings snapped open and she was lifted on an updraft that carried her so high into the sky, her ears popped. She heard the woman, still screaming like an idiot as she swooped and tumbled in great circles of triumph. She was flying... She was the Golden Eagle. And she loved it.

Until the wind stopped. And she fell, furiously flapping her wings in an attempt to fly again, to be the Golden Eagle she was born to be. All the blood rushed to her head as she drew nearer and nearer to the ground and she started to cry. She closed her eyes, and fainted to the sound of a grand voice, roaring over the wind, "Aresto Momentum!"

Hermione had made him slow her fall. If Snape had had his own way, he would have watched as the stupid girl plummeted to her well deserved death. Now they were running down the hill, to where she had thankfully landed in a sage bush, as an older man came sprinted with grace that seemed strange for a man his age. He roared at the professor as he kneeled next to the girl, his voice deep and gruff.

Hermione slowly began to run her fingers through the girls hair, watching her breathe slowly, but shallowly. The tall, Native man was running now, trying to make it to the girl's side before she woke.

Her eyes fluttered open, eagle yellow. She looked up, into the dark, angry eyes of her potions professor. He snarled, "Stupid girl. Did it even cross your mind to open your arms to slow your fall? No - you just flapped desperately like a big stupid goose."

"Better than a thin, scrawny bat." She replied, sounding raspy. It hurt to breathe, and it felt like someone was driving a knife into her side. "Who's stabbing me?" she asked, blinking drunkenly. She tried to sit up and Snape pushed her down.

"Stay down, you foolish, idiotic..."

The old man was finally at their side. "Stop. Let her rise."

Melissa whimpered. "Grandad..."

He helped his granddaughter sit up, then gave her a drink of something that made her scowl. He rubbed her back gently, then gave the sallow-skinned man a glare. The professor looked somehow out of place, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, a leather jacket to keep the cold away. It was like... As if the clothes didn't fit him - even though they did.

Grandad stooped and picked Melissa up, deaf to her screams. He had what he needed in the back of his truck.

Snape's jaw worked, listening to the girl wail and grind her teeth against the pain. It was like listening to a Revel - something he had prayed never to hear again. Either she was the worlds biggest wimp - or she had acid pouring from her stomach and into her lungs. Her breathing was shallow and filled with pain, her torso during dark.

He sprinted forward, meeting the eyes of the Native man who was carrying his granddaughter toward his pick up. He said softly. "She's going to die if you don't give her the proper medication."

The Native man narrowed his eyes, and the professor drew himself up, trying to be imposing. The Native shaman growled. "Once, long ago, the white man came through our lands and offered us many things. Food. Guns. Medicine. Roads. But we stuck to the old ways, and still do. There is nothing the hospital could do for her that I can't."

Snape scowled upon being referred to as a white man. Why was it just for them to point fingers and call names? Such a double standard. "I work at the school she attends for witches and wizards..."

"And this makes you a master of all things - now does it? If her time to go hunt with our ancestors has come - there is no medicine on the planet that will stop that."

Hermione looked furious, and Severus had to catch her arm as she brushed past him, determined to get at the old man who had so insulted her husband. Melissa was carried into the back of the pickup and driven away after some careful attentions from her grandfather.

That was the last the student and teacher saw of each other until the new term started.

Sixth year NEWT Potions had cut the class size considerably. Of the original seven of her pre-OWL class, three progressed. Melissa, and two Slytherins. They were lobbed together with the six that progressed from the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff class, and Melissa quickly found this Hell. Some of the potions required to be made by the students required two people to complete within the period. She would NOT be paired off with Snape, she refused to have another label.

So she worked alone.

It was stressful, and quite often she left the classroom in a great rage, not having finished or having tried to finish and ended up messing up so badly, she got a Look of Scorn from the teacher she was trying SO hard to impress.

The Draught of Living Death was where she put her foot down. She had been sweating over the cauldron for nearly an hour, snarling at the instructions. Terribly written, vague. She eventually put the book aside, and pulled a bundle of dried herbs from the pocket of her robes. Her grandfather had a medicine that would send his patients into a sleep so deep they barely breathed. The only problem was - it was a powder, not a potion.

She growled under her breath, and got to work. Grinding, heating and cooling, wishing she had the obsidian mortar and pestle she had seen Grandad use so often.

When the period ended, the students labeled their work and put it on the potions master's desk. Many of them used large, crystal vials for liquids, proudly displaying perfect, dark, viscous liquid. Several were filled with shades of starling neon. Melissa cringed at these, knowing the mark that awaited them. But when she set her short, clear specimen vial on the teachers desk, full of a powder so fine and dark it could have been gunpowder.

She then turned on her heel, sat down and lifted her chin proudly, trying to conceal her nerves.

The Potions Master picked up her vial, eyes betraying no emotion. He then setting to one side, scrawled something on a piece of parchment and continued marking.

She and all the other students were dismissed.

Niffler after Niffler lay around the professors lab, some merely drowsing, others dead. He growled, then looked back at the infuriating little vial. It worked - there was no doubt about that. But how much was too much?! He kicked one Niffler he thought to be dead and it squealed softly.

Severus blinked in surprise, stooping down to the small, black creature and picked it up. He lifted it to his ear and felt the gentle breath on his sallow cheek, the heartbeat thrum beneath his finger. It was still alive...

He rushed around the room, robes billowing out behind him as he picked up dead Niffler after dead Niffler, listening for breathing, feeling for a heartbeat. They were alive - all of them were alive...

He felt a great sense of pride wash over him. She had outdone herself. The powder did the exact same thing as the potion, it was more easily concealed, it was...

"Outstanding..." he murmured, and wrote the grade both in his mark book and on the outside label of the vial. It hadn't been what he told the students to do, but he admired and encouraged attempted variations in his students potions - even more so if it retained it's original ability.

He frowned. Miss Sauvage was a Ravenclaw. An Outstanding just would not do. So he removed the mark from the outside of the bottle, changing it to 'Exceeds Expectations' but kept the grade in the book the same. He smirked. The last thing the Potions Master wanted was to go easy on her.


End file.
